A life in progress

For the past week or so, I have been deeply enjoying my vacation with no where to go and a minimum of grown-up pants.  The amount of time I've been spending in my pajamas in almost obscene, and I've accomplished virtually nothing.  I have, however, taken some of this time to experiment with some of the many Pinterest boards I've collected in the past couple of years. From time to time, I do scroll through my boards and pick out recipes to try and the occasional craft project to tackle.  This week, I decided to amp it up a little bit and try a few different things.... mostly sweet things, but I must admit that I've been impressed by the results.  Here's the wrap-up (to date) 1.  Delicious homemade toffee.  It called "salted dark chocolate almond toffee" and reported to be the most delicious toffee in the world.  I have not been everywhere in the world, but it is pretty delicious. The blogger has gone through the trouble of screwing up toffee...

2014 is winding to a close, and everyone is making  Facebook year in review  slideshows.  It's really kind of an awesome concept.  Facebook has chosen some random photo albums, posts and pictures from the year and turned them into a little presentation.  In creating and watching mine (which I've since watched a dozen times), I realized how awesome my year was! While the year is not quite over yet -- and knowing me, things could go crazy in the next 8 days, I thought I'd take a few minutes to be thankful for the amazing year I had.  It's sort of like Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years all rolled into one... talk about crazy. Of course, I am thankful for my wonderful husband.  We had an amazing year together & I am ever-grateful that I found him.  The adventures we had this year were unparalleled and something I never could have come up with in my wildest dreams.  While the year started on sort of a sour note (failed IVF), it only...

I really love the holidays.  As I mentioned in my last post, it's not so much the holidays themselves, but the fact that I can hang out in my pajamas for days on end.  I shower and change into new pajamas every day, and occasionally put on grown-up pants to leave the house, but mostly it's me and my doggies hanging out watching Law and Order marathons. Between USA, TNT, Bravo, Cloo, and Sundance, some form of Law and Order always seems to be on some channel.  Of course, if I ever get desperate, I do own the entire original series on DVD.  Despite the fact that I've seen EVERY episode - many of them more than once, I still like to settle down to a good marathon - especially the odd "themed" marathons.  But, I love it.  Most of the time I don't even actively watch it; I just use it as background noise while I'm doing other things around the house.  I like the predictability and patterns.  Sometimes the outcome is a "surprise twist", but the chara...

It is my favorite time of year.  Not necessarily the holidays, but it is that magical time when I don't have to go anywhere, or do anything, except hang out at home in my pajamas and watch movies with my dogs.  According to TimeHop, that's what I do around this time every year.  The sheer number of "wearing pajamas and watching movies" Facebook posts in late December is almost frightening. This year, Mike is out of town for a few days, so I have even less motivation than usual.  Paris, Lily, Bill and I have been watching TV and baking Christmas treats for the past two days, and let me tell you - divine.  While, granted, I've been doing the bulk of the baking and the pups are mostly sitting in the kitchen and waiting for me to drop things, it all works out. I do feel extra-justified in my mini-hibernation this year.  On Thursday night, we had our final DFS inspection in preparation for taking in foster children.  We worked and cleaned for days getti...

This was me today.  Well, sort of.  I don't have incredible hair or $1000 shoes.  But what I did seem to have was an unending stream of frustrations that led me to a less-than-stellar day of teaching. Everyone has bad days at work.  Doctors, lawyers, fast food workers, everyone.  Entire literary and comedy careers have been built upon the simple concept of a really bad day. (this by the way, was also me) My day was no worse than anyone else's bad day.  Ironically, my husband also had a pretty rough go of it today.  Some parents complained about a new teaching method he was trying out & rather than allow him to explain, his administration told him that it was probably just better to go back to the old way.  He hadn't done anything remotely wrong, he just wanted to try something different. I, on the other hand, had one of those days.  It started too early because of a scheduled before-school training, which I never lik...

(I actually started writing this nearly a month ago... but finals happened and it didn't get finished until just now... for a better explanation of the insanity of finals... see my other post.  :) ) I'm linking up with Jen from Ramblings of a Suburban Mom  today for Thursday Thoughts Today, I am going to write part two of my ode to my mom.  After I posted yesterday, I realized there was a lot more I wanted to say.  So, I'm going to continue part two of my ongoing series... honestly, it might only be a two-part series, but I want to keep my options open. I'm going to start off by telling you the things my mom did not teach me.  She did not teach me how to cook, or bake, or sew, even though she was great at these things herself.  Not for lack of effort, mind you, but because I had ZERO skills.  I'm going to give her credit for attempting to teach me those things, but I don't think Martha Stewart herself could have imparted any homemaking k...

I am on the cusp of finishing my 7th semester of law school.  For a full time student, that would mean I was done and waiting for someone to confirm my diploma so I could get on with this whole "being a lawyer" thing.  I however, am a part-time student and have 4 more semesters to go before that whole "being a lawyer thing" kicks in. People ask me all the time what it's like, or just shake their heads in amazement when I tell them what I do, but I don't know that anyone outside of my law-school friends, and other lawyers really understand.  Being a part-time law student is maybe the most difficult thing I have ever attempted. Let me explain: First off, I have my "normal" life.  I have a full time career teaching middle/high school English (this is my 10th year), as well as a family and friends.  My husband and I have been married almost four years; I've actually been in law school for most of our marriage & it won't be until we...